The Imposter Impala From the Planet Cybertron
by L. Mouse
Summary: There's something wrong with the Impala's radio ...
1. Chapter 1

Author's Notes:

I thought I'd post this in honor of the premiere of season five of SPN. It is unrelated to my fanfic "Masks" though it could conceivably be set in the same universe. It's something I'm working on when I get stuck on Masks or other fics.

This is set some generic time during the first season of SPN, and obviously pre-Movieverse by a few years for the Transformers.

* * *

"I dunno, Sam," Dean said, as he disassembled his shotgun on a hotel bed, "maybe it was just a meteor."

"Maybe," Sam said, unconvinced. He was poking through a cryptozoology website, merely amused by most of the postings. _Amateurs_, he thought, in response to a guy who claimed to have caught a picture of Bigfoot on a game cam. To Sam's eyes, the picture was of a large bear. They were not looking for bigfoot today, however, or bears, so he clicked away from the page and did another search for meteor-related mayhem.

"Sure is quiet now, though." Dean squirted a little oil onto a rag. "Weirdest thing in this town is the Museum of Pigs."

"Heh. I'm still not convinced that was just a meteor ... there were those reports on the internet about monster of some kind, and that was a pretty big crater in the field. Nothing in it."

"Nothing in it because somebody probably stole the meteor in question before the farmer got there. You know what those things go for on eBay? Lots of moolah. _Lots_." Dean, having swiftly cleaned and reassembled the shotgun, moved on to a Glock. "Place is too quiet and too normal for there to be anything weird here. This is Normalsville, Kansas and not in a weird way."

"Maybe," Sam repeated. He rose and padded to the window, peering warily outside. The little motel's single parking lot light was burned out, and the only illumination came from the "Vacant" sign. That wasn't much, and it was a moonless night. The Impala, parked in front of their room, was very dimly visible as a pool of dark shadow amid slightly paler shadows, with a few red reflections from the sign glinting off the glossy black paint. After a moment of not entirely idle study of the darkness outside, Sam sighed and admitted, "But I can't find anything. Guess we move on tomorrow. What was it that you found for us to check out -- a haunted, abandoned, mental hospital?"

Dean shivered. "Yeah. It's claimed at least one life a year. Kids sneaking in 'cause of the rumors, and always an accident, but you know the drill."

"Geeze. Sounds like a live one." Sam shook his head, and moved away from the window.

He did not see a rather large patch of shadow behind the Impala move slightly.

* * *

_Slag_, _that was too close_, the scout thought, after having stood utterly motionless for a few minutes. He thought he was very fortunate that human vision was so poor. Any of his species would have spotted him in a single pulse of their spark. He relaxed only when the human man retreated from the window, but he did not move from his location, frozen in place in the shadows, for moments longer. When he did finally walk away, it was with a very slow, quiet tread. He was large, though not as large as some of his race, and the normally heavy tread of his feet would draw attention. Even the dull senses of humans could not fail to notice the vibrations and noise several tons of alien robot would cause, if he set his feet down normally.

Moving as much stealth as he could muster he walked the length of the parking lot, closely inspecting the vehicles, and discarding most of them as insufficient for his needs. Almost all seemed cheaply made, with thin body panels and wimpy, underpowered engines. A few were too big. Two were too small for his needs.

After a moment, he returned to the oldest vehicle in the lot. By the long-lived standards of his race it was practically new. The car was careworn but well maintained, with spotless glossy paint. A quick scan confirmed it seemed to be in good physical condition. This world's moist oxygen atmosphere could cause very quick rusting of the inferior alloys humanity's primitive vehicles were made of, but this one seemed to have no sign of such damage. Moreover, it had a decently large engine and far heavier construction than anything else immediately available.

He scanned it more closely, and noted to his surprise that the trunk was full of weapons. Most humans did not routinely handle guns, and some didn't even own any. That struck the scout as strange; he had been very heavily armed almost since his creation, tens of thousands of years before. The pulse cannon attached to his arm and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers were an extension of his self, and he felt naked when they were removed for any reason. The car's owners were likely sensible sorts, he concluded, and perhaps of a similar mindset to himself. He theorized that they were soldiers or law enforcement officers of some kind. The sturdy design of their vehicle and the weapons they owned would support that.

_This will have to do_. _I will study the vehicle's owners and decide if they may be useful allies. We are not yet sure of the level of secrecy needed here,_ he thought, and ruthlessly squelched the completely vain personal complaint about the car's color. Black was not his preferred shade. He loved yellows and golds above all else, but he was also a soldier and he could deal with a gloomy, depressingly dark paint job for as long as he needed to stay undercover.

Decision made, the scout then retreated to the safety of some concealing trees beyond the parking lot and waited a bit longer before making his move. He hoped the humans would enter their sleep cycle soon, but it was a good hour before that wish was gratified. The lights went off in the room. After another half an hour, his natural impatience warring with his vast experience and survival instincts the entire time, he finally made his move.

A bit of fumbling with a magno-pick got the vehicle's locked door open. He carefully reached a hand inside, put it in neutral (and the gear shift felt so very tiny and fragile in his hand), took the parking brake off, then padded around to the front and gingerly picked up that end with one hand under the frame. The car groaned loudly when he lifted the wheels off the ground, and he froze, hoping that he had not woken the owners. They did not stir and he tiptoed away, towing the vehicle on its back wheels after him. He had already identified a densely wooded lot half a block down the road, and it was there he walked with his kidnapped automobile.

He stopped in a spot that appeared to be very secluded, and removed the weapons from the trunk. Then removed a portable holo-emitter from a compartment under the armor on his thigh. Once the device was triggered, the car was disguised by a vehicle-shaped rock outcrop. He assumed the owners would want it back, and he had no desire to see it damaged. Disguising it behind a hologram should keep it reasonably safe until he could direct them to it, or retrieve it himself. His final step was to scuff out the tire tracks with one heavily armored foot, disguising them as best he could.

He did a much more thorough scan of the black car, transcanning it, then padded out to the road and initiated a transformation sequence. Getting the assortment of guns and rock salt (why salt? he wondered) into the trunk was not particularly difficult, though it did involve partially transforming back to protoform and a few awkward contortions that would have had Jazz howling with laughter at him if he'd been around to witness it.

_Yes. Suitable_, he thought with satisfaction when the weapons were stowed and he had transformed again. He drove himself back to the parking lot, moving quickly now as dawn was only a few hours away. Happily, he thought. _This vehicle will do nicely. If I decide to stay with them for a bit, I wonder if I could convince them to let me change the color scheme, however, to a nice cheery yellow?_

* * *

_  
_Dean blinked awake, then lunged upright. The Impala!

He ran to the window, certain he had heard the Impala's engine outside. He yanked open the curtains ...

... to see the Impala sitting innocently in front of the hotel room, in the same position as he had left it. A faint glow of sunrise tinted the eastern sky a lighter shade of night, but the parking lot was still pitch black.

_Huh. Must have been a nightmare. No ... _he gave the Impala a very suspicious look. _I could have _sworn _I heard the engine running._

Maybe somebody had driven by with a similar vehicle, he decided. He was not satisfied, however, until he padded outside and inspected the car by flashlight. It seemed untouched but the uneasy feeling that something was wrong did not leave.

_That's weird, _he thought, finally, and went back inside. He did not sleep much the rest of the night. The thought of someone messing with the Impala was enough to give him nightmares.


	2. Chapter 2

The scout had done this before, of course. He was older than human civilization and even allowing for the vast distances between worlds, and eons spent in stasis, he had visited many, many worlds. His current function was primarily that of an advance explorer; he was adaptable, resourceful, and highly intelligent, and had a reputation for both courage and good luck.

_Could use some of that luck _now _he thought, _in frustration, listening to the two men argue in his front seat. He was still trying to sort out their language, never mind beginning surveillance. He had arrived on the world only a day before, and while deciphering alien languages was something he was good at, this species seemed more difficult than most. His own language was very precise, with hundreds of millions of words. It was tonal, but rhythm and timing also lent substantial meaning, and octave mattered too.

Humans, by contrast, had a very slippery language, with what he suspected were far too many homonyms and synonyms for the scout's pleasure. Others of his kind had been here before, but that had been tens of thousands of years ago. The language had changed dramatically, beyond any sort of backwards compatability. The result was that figuring out how everything fit together was driving him to glitching out.

So far, he had determined the taller organic creature responded to 'Sam' and the smaller one to 'Dean.' He was not sure if those were names, titles, or relationships. A scan of their anatomic structure indicated that they were both male, and a bit of genetic analysis had shown that they shared the same parents. They were brothers.

At the moment, the two brothers were making loud vocalizations at each other. He had no idea if they were playing, arguing, or if that was normal friendly behavior between them. There was so much he needed to learn before he could even begin his mission to search this world for any trace of the Allspark. He was both fascinated by the puzzle, as he was quizzical by nature, and frustrated by the challenge, as time was always of the essence. Reliable intelligence had warned them that their enemy would soon be arriving on this world too. If the Allspark was here, they needed to find it before the Decepticons did.

He was alone, a single scout, with backup still light years away. It was a lonely role for a social species such as his, and frightening. If he died here, the others might never know what happened to him. If he failed, everything they'd worked for could be lost. The Allspark could not be allowed to fall into 'con hands.

Resolutely, he turned his attention back to the two organic people riding in his cab. Dean's hands on his steering unit were firm, competent, and confident. It was difficult to turn control of his body over to a stranger, but at least Dean seemed to know what he was doing. He drove a bit aggressively, but not recklessly. To tell the truth, if the scout had been controlling his own travel he would have gone a lot faster.

Something occurred to him.

There was a gauge on his dashboard, transcanned from their vehicle. It was clearly meant to indicate speed, and the symbols on the spedometer matched the symbols on signs by the side of the road. _Ahah. _He had a number system to work with now. Dean seemed to be ignoring the speed limit; either the speed limit was a suggestion, it was a rule Dean wasn't held to, or he was breaking what was probably a minor law. Speed limits were common on roads the unverse over. Even Cybertron had them, for safety's sake. Breaking speed limits was just about as universal as the existence of speed limits.

From that observation, he determined they were using a base ten numeric system, with a fairly straight-forward number structure. Numbers were read left to right. When Sam pulled out a magazine, the scout watched from an optical sensor hidden in the overhead light, and assembled a good sampling of the rest of their alphabet. He did not know what sound was attached to which letter yet, and lacked a context to decipher their language in print, but he was building a library of symbols. It was a start.

The brothers stopped an hour later at a facility that provided food. He watched them through a window, while simultaneously extending his sensor net. He picked up a number of things. There were lightly encrypted and unencrypted radio transmissions, obviously intended for a variety of purposes. Some were two way, some seemed to be broadcast only. There were also relatively mystifying video transmissions. He wasn't sure which were documentaries, which were news, and which were entertainment. Since he didn't know a lot about this culture, it was hard to decipher exactly what he was seeing, but he saved everything for later analysis. Past explorers had made repeated observations that this species placed a high valure on fictional tales, and had told many stories for pure entertainment value.

His people did the same thing. Fiction was comprehensible, and once he had deciphered their language, it would be helpful. He had long ago learned that the two most useful things for learning about an alien culture were that culture's fiction, and that culture's gossip. Both helped an alien such as himself determine what they found most important, and from there one had a key to understanding their mindset.

The scout picked through the confusing myriad of transmissions a bit more, then found one that seemed ... different. A quick bit of curious testing, and he discovered it was being broadcast from a wide open, unprotected connection to an alien computer. The alien computer was a primitive thing, he'd met datapads with far more artificial intelligence, but it the transmission proved useful. It didn't take him long at all to connect and determine that the computer used binary as its machine language, and the binary was translated into representations of the letters he'd deciphered earlier by some very primitive code.

Ten seconds later, he had access to the 'internet'.

_Hey, useful! _He thought, cheerier than he had been since arriving.

There were many very helpful sound and video files. Some files had captions attached. All it took from that point was throwing a tremendous amount of processor power at the problem, and playing 'match the character to the sound' until everything snapped into place. The captions didn't correspond the sound exactly, but they discussed the same context. That gave him enough information to match sound to character and establish the phonetics of their alphabet. It was a surprisingly simple system. Each letter equaled a sound, though some letters were combined to make other sounds. He had once had to decrypt a language with two hundred thousand individual pictograms -- which had been complicated by his inability to ask vocal questions. This was easy, by comparison.

Once he had the phonetics mastered, he turned his focus to comprehension. He found an online dictionary with many pictures, and began to build a vocabulary. This planet had a fairly large networked database of communications and information, maintained by individuals. The damn thing was both archaic and a functional anarchy. It was also slower than the sublight flight. Transmission speeds could be measured in the gigabyte, and he was quickly left irritated, frustrated, and vexed. He needed more input and it was going to be a slow process to get it.

_Pit slagging ... _He had been right, and the past explorers correct, in that this species had a _very _slippery, inexact, and difficult language. Every word had multiple nuanced meanings, they used extensive slang, and they had evolved sarcasm to a fine art. Tonality mattered a lot, because it was entirely possible for a human to say one thing and mean something completely different. Understanding this language would be all about context, something he had very little of. Irritated, he turned his attention to plowing through terabytes of data to build the database he needed. Each word was analyzed, each phrase reviewed. It was going to take _forever ... _days, at least ... before he could reliably communicate.

He would have growled aloud if it would have resulted in anything but a very painful burst of static.

Somewhat to his disappointment, the brothers returned to the car after half a planetary hour in the diner. "Dean, I still say there was something funky in that town ...'

The scout compared that phrase against the information he'd collected so far, googled the word 'funky', then agreed. The funky thing was the scout. Sam's instincts were very good.

"Yeah, maybe, but there's definitely something wrong at that asylum. I'll take a definite over a maybe."

Asylum? Again he searched. _Insane asylum? _Was someone they knew committed, perhaps in trouble? He wasn't sure. 'Insane asylum' was where they put mentally deranged individuals. 'To seek asylum' meant to look for protection. There might be meanings he didn't know yet, too. It was all so vague.

And frustratingly, he couldn't actually _ask _them. Optimus said that he was the best scout for this sort of thing, a deep cover surveillance of an alien civilization. He was to search for any reference to the Allspark, and use his best judgement about revealing himself. Due to long ago damage to his vocalizer he was not able to speak himself, though he could certainly communicate in other ways: body language, recorded snatches of sound (he was already building a library of sound bites for that purpose), and text.

Since he coudn't find a way to access the internet while they were moving, as they were no open connections in the area, he started exploring his options for eventual in depth communication. The vehicle he'd transcanned had nothing digital integrated with it, so he couldn't hack a video display to show words without making an alteration to the interior. He might try that later, and generate some sort of screen that he could print words on, but not now. The humans would likely react badly to a sudden change unexplained change to the interior of their vehicle.

A scan of their possessions revealed several possibilities. Both men had small, portable, computers that resembled primitive datapads. These had 'wifi' circuits and he could probably connect to the laptops via a modified comm link. They also owned cellular phones, which had text messaging capabilities. He set a subroutine to writing code for both possibilities.

_Ooh. _Then he discovered that both computers had sizable video files saved on them. Dean's seemed to be mostly focused on procreation (tutorials perhaps?) and after a quick review the scout dismissed those videos as not particularly helpful. He now knew a bit more about human intercourse than he strictly needed to after seeing those files. He suspected they might consider movies of it a form of performance art (not unusual for organic species) or something of that nature. However, most of the files didn't have much language and it was learning slagging English that was his current focus.

Sam's computer, however, held a treasure trove. At first he thought he was looking at documentaries of some sort, but then he encountered a movie that featured humans in outer space ... after a moment's surprised contemplation that this might be an undiscovered starfaring race, he dismissed that possibility. The design of the starcraft, even the way they navigated, clearly indicated that this was fiction. It was very creative fiction, however, and the scout was deeply and profoundly impressed by it.

_Holy Primus. This species has not yet mastered quantum mechanics and yet they are already dreaming of travelling the stars. Ambitious little fraggers. Clever, creative, curious people._

It didn't escape his notice that the last survey of this world had been seven thousand years ago. Humans then had been living in caves, and their greatest technological achievement had been pottery. The scout was far older than that. In his own lifetime -- in a _fraction _of his lifespan, and he was among the youngest of his kind alive -- this short-lived, ephemeral, fragile organic species had gone from baking ceramics in fire to dreaming of sending explorers to the stars. Given a few more centuries he figured they'd achieve it, too.

He added _'Use the force, Luke'_ to his sound bytes. It might come in handy someday.

* * *

"Huh." Dean squinted at the dash board. "Sam, when was the last time we filled up?"

"Gas, you mean?" Sam glanced over. "Uh, yesterday night, I think."

"Shit, we must be running on fumes." It was late afternoon and they'd been driving since dawn except for a short break at a diner. "Something's wrong with the gas gauge, I guess. Still shows full."

Sam sighed. "If we have to walk, I swear Dean ..."

"You swear what?"

"You're walking. I'm sitting right here until you come back."

Dean cast his brother a dark look. "She'll make it."

The Impala did make it to the next truck stop, as improbable as that seemed. Dean also glanced away from the dash, then looked back, and discovered the gauge was on 'E'. Apparently, whatever was stuck had worked loose.

"That's weird. We must have gone at least six, maybe seven hundred miles. The Impala's range is only four hundred or so." Sam scowled at the dash.

"Yes, Mr. Wizard," Dean shot back, "it's obviously more than that today."

"Did we just forget filling up somewhere?" Sam scratched his head. "Something's _weird_."

* * *

The 'asylum' turned out to be an empty, abandoned building with severe structural deficits. The scout scanned the building with some concern and decided it was not in imminent danger of collapse. He hoped the humans would be careful where they walked. The floor was unstable. Also, it had potentially hazardous animal life living within its walls, including arachnids.

The two men took a pair of weapons (which he now recognized as sawed off shotguns) out of the trunk, and loaded them with shells that were filled with salt. He still had not figured out why they were shooting things with salt. The only references he could find to rock salt as a weapon had to do with farmers using it as non-lethal deterrent against thieves. It did not seem like they were farmers, and the asylum was in the middle of a desolate forest. The closest agricultural activity was twenty miles away.

Dean then slapped Sam upside the head, and said, "Geeze, are you six?"

"What did I do?" Sam demanded, indignantly.

"You didn't put the guns away, you just threw them in there!"

"I thought you did it!"

"Bullshit."

"Something's weird, Dean." This had become Sam's mantra. Aside from the scout's 'oops' with the gas gauge he had made no mistakes, so he wasn't sure how Sam knew something was wrong. The young man was very perceptive.

The scout sank down on his shocks in embarrassment as soon as they turned their backs to him. The argument was his fault. While he had managed to get all of their weapons into his trunk, they were just tossed in. It wasn't like he could easily reach his own aft end! Each brother thought the other had been lazy and messy. He owed them an apology for the confusion, later.

The two humans broke a padlock on the front door and disappeared into the building. He paid alert attention, trying to determine what they were doing. As tactical military targets, it seemed lacking. There were no other life signs within. A thorough scan showed nothing out of the ordinary. It seemed to be nothing more than an abandoned building.

Then, abruptly, he detected something.

Something very odd.

It felt like a spark signature at first, and the scout went from sagging his suspension to nearly jumping off the ground in surprise. _Fraggit, Decepticons?_

There weren't supposed to be any other Autobots on Earth. There were no neutrals left in this quadrant of the galaxy. By process of elimination, that left 'cons. It was a _strong _signal, an EM spike so powerful that it obliterated the music-oriented radio channels he'd been absently listening to. He nearly transformed in surprise when a power surge made his horn honk. One door popped open on its own.

_Oh, _pit,_ that's not a 'con spark, that's a spark that got lost on the way to the Well of All Sparks. _He figured it out a moment later, as his radio dial spun on its own, and an oldies song started playing. _A damned ghost. Maybe a human soul, but I don't slagging care. Same difference and it's screwing with me._

He was ... not ... happy. He'd run into ghosts before. Most Cybertronian soldiers had. They were annoying nuisances at best, and dangerous at worst. The dearly departed were supposed to go on to the afterlife, and not stick around and twiddle with his mechanisms!

_Get the frag out of my systems, you fragging, slagging, pit-born human _ghost_! _

He could feel it poking around. It was probably angry, and it was not being gentle with the way it was prodding at his electronic bits and tugging on his mechanical parts. It was human. No doubt about that. No mechanoid ghost would ever dare be this bold with a pissed off Autobot warrior. The ghost would be certain to know the end result of _that _sort of a battle.

The scout slammed his force shields up, hard, with an offensive flare. They came online violently enough to hurt, as solidified energy collided forcefully with the disorganized, decaying force that was the dead soul. The ghost uttered a screech of pain that almost certainly was audible clear into spectrums that humans could hear, and retreated twenty feet. He hissed static at the ghost, the only noise he could really make other than chirps and clicks, and the ghost flared an EM pulse angrily back at him.

The noise of his horn had brought the brothers running. Belatedly, he realized that they were heading right into trouble.

The ghost sensed them coming. It spun about, and charged at Sam with lightning speed.

_It could killl Sam._ The ghost was wickedly powerful, one of the most potent he'd ever run across. It would have a hard time actually hurting the scout, but the humans were far more fragile. The thought that their lives were in danger crossed the scout's processor, and one nanoclick later, he flung himself into a transformation. The end of one hand blurred into a pulse cannon. He leveled the gun at the ghost and fired before it could react. A single pulse of his own spark later, both humans discharged their rock salt laden weapons at the point where the ghost had been.

Ghosts, as a rule, did not deal well with disruptively high levels of energy. It was effectively dematerialized by his blast. (So was a tree, and a chunk of the asylum's wall.) It wasn't dead. It probably wasn't even down for the count. It was temporarily off-lined, however, giving him a moment to figure out what to do. Getting the slag out of dodge seemed like a real possibility. Dealing with hostile alien spirits was so _not _in his job description.

The humans quickly backed up, staring at him. That was not entirely the best reaction, given he was on their side and the blasted ghost wasn't. They seemed more afraid of him than they were of supernatural threats. He could detect stress hormones, elevated heart rates, and rapid respiration from both of them. He needed to tell them he was on their side somehow, and he cursed his damaged voice like never before. Frantically, he searched through the sound bytes he'd collected that day and found something that was probably appropriate.

"Tell the people back at Earth control  
Send Star Fleet legions to save our souls  
Always daring and courageous  
Ooh Only they can save us ..."

He took a step towards them, gun hand aimed upwards, and the other extended with palm skywards. He chirped, trying to sound as non-threatening as possible.

The ghost reappeared behind Dean.

_SLAG it!_

He aimed his cannon. Dean's eyes grew wide and both brothers shouted curses at him and fired rock salt at his optics. He discharged his pulse cannon at the ghost, missing Dean by about two feet. The shotgun blasts hit his faceplate, doing no more damage than a few stinging scratches. The shock wave from the blast knocked Dean down, but it was better than being knifed in the back by a malignant and evil dead guy.

"What the _hell _did it do to the Impala!" Dean rolled back to his feet.

"It missed you," Sam noted.

"Ghosts hate iron. How the hell is it manipulating the damned Impala?" Sam demanded.

Bee played the musical notes from a movie called 'Close Enounters' and pointed skywards.

The middle of a battle with something supernatural was generally not the best time to make friends with an alien species. Bee reflected on this truth when both men exchanged a look of bemusement. "It's an alien?" Sam said. Dean shrugged. Then they both shot him with rock salt for a second time.


End file.
